


Haircut

by HiddenLacuna



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Friendship, Haircuts, Hairgasm, Humor, M/M, Shower Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-02
Updated: 2012-06-02
Packaged: 2017-11-06 16:25:51
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,025
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/420925
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HiddenLacuna/pseuds/HiddenLacuna
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Sherlock, you need a haircut,” John says. “You’re beginning to look like Jonathan Creek.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Haircut

**Author's Note:**

> Merci to Moonblossom!

Morning. Eggs, toast, jam, tea. Searching the newspaper for useful data, Sherlock keeps brushing his black curls out of his eyes.

“Sherlock, you need a haircut,” John says. “You’re beginning to look like Jonathan Creek.”

The detective scowls and doesn’t look up from the financial columns. “I don’t know who that is.”

“He’s on telly.” Sherlock raises his eyes in a blank and slightly contemptuous stare. “Well, consider it branding. Can’t have two mopheaded detectives roaming the streets of England. You’ll double your enemies list.” John takes a bite of his toast and raises his cup to his lips to hide a smile.

Sherlock huffs. “I hate getting my hair cut. They always ask the most mundane questions. They don’t properly sterilize their scissors. The music is appallingly loud and juvenile. And they won’t let me take the hair away.” He scowls and flips his fringe, but it flops right back over his eyes. Of course it’s intractable. It’s a part of Sherlock.

John cocks his head to one side and smirks. “If you like, I could cut it for you. I’ve done Harry’s loads of times. Never left her bald-headed once.” _We just won’t mention the incident with the blue dye over bleached hair,_ he thinks.

Sherlock considers the proposition while John turns his attention back to his breakfast. He really doesn’t like the barber, and leaving the flat for so trivial a purpose rankles him when there are murders to be solved and chemicals to analyse and tables to memorize and a nice forearm with acute molloscum contagiosum to dissect. It certainly would be the most expedient thing to allow John to cut his hair and be done with it for another month or so. But Sherlock has a secret.

He is fiercely proud of his hair. He relishes the inky black tangle. He loves the way it curls; loves the way its darkness sets off his too-pale skin; loves to muss it up with his fingers as an outward sign of the chaos spinning in his frustrated brain. If he didn’t irrationally care about his hair, he would keep it sensibly shorn to a few scant centimeters. Why provide a potential assailant with a convenient fisthold? Why bother with the time of brushing it and untangling it and putting product in it after showers? Why have yet another easily-identifiable personal characteristic - as if being nearly two meters tall and ten and a half stone weren’t memorable enough - when trying to pass unnoticed on a case?

The deeper reason he keeps it long is that it’s now a testament to his hard-won sobriety. He doesn’t need to worry about passing a drugs test any more, and the length of his hair is a subtle testament to that success. Each and every overlong follicle is months upon months of proof that he is clean, that he has long left the hideous shell of his old self behind. It’s something that no one but himself and possibly Mycroft would ever notice. Sherlock finds that his own hair is a comfort, a promise, and a touchstone when he feels the gnawing call of pharmaceutical escape echoing through the hollows of his self-loathing.

But his hair really is getting much too long, and if there’s something Sherlock dislikes more than barber shops, Anderson, and daytime television, it’s _anything_ , including parts of himself, getting in his way. _Everything else is transport_ , he reminds himself. How bad could it possibly be? He knows John won’t be careless. John’s always been concerned about what other people think about Sherlock anyway; he won’t want to be seen out with the detective if he has a horrible and awkward haircut, but he wouldn’t want to stay home, either. The perfect barber, Sherlock decides. John’s got as much invested in making this come out right as he has.

“All right,” he says. John swallows the last of his toast with a gulp.

“Really?” John says, his eyes widening. “Hadn’t really thought you’d have gone for that.”

“Well if you think you can’t -” Sherlock begins hastily.

“No - no, I wasn’t saying that. I’m happy to cut your hair for you. I just know how …. exacting you can be.”

“I trust you, John,” Sherlock says, simply. John looks away, oddly touched.

“Right!” he says, brightly. “Meet you in the upstairs loo in ten minutes? I’ll find the lefty scissors, you find a ratty sheet to put around yourself. You should probably take a quick shower, too. Hair’s easier to cut when it’s wet.”

“None of my sheets are ‘ratty’,” Sherlock grumbles.

John rolls his eyes. “Fine, so find the least spectacular one then. Come on, then.”

In hindsight, John should have been more specific about the sheet. John has laid out the scissors and comb on the edge of the sink, has a broom and dustpan and a tupperware container at the ready, and is setting up the small folding chair in the centre of the loo when he hears Sherlock’s tread on the stairs. He turns, and for a moment his mouth drops open. Sherlock is wet and bedraggled and appears to be wearing nothing but a white sheet which exposes his pale legs and chest. He apparently has taken “put a sheet around yourself” as a full instruction and not as a convenience to keep hair off his clothes. Sherlock meets his eyes and swivels his head sideways and back - a head-only shrug. John shuts his mouth with a snap. He doesn’t know why Sherlock doing things in the strangest way possible surprises him any more.

“Okay. First, we’ve got to wrap this up better. You’re going to get bits of hair all down your... front,” he finishes in a strangled voice. “Come on, sit here.” Sherlock shuffles over to the chair and sits, straight-backed. “Put the ends of the sheet over your shoulders,” John instructs. “I’ll just close my eyes for a moment while you get yourself adjusted.” He winces. That sounded awfully suggestive. John stares into the blackness of his eyelids.

“I _am_ wearing underwear,” Sherlock drawls, and repositions the sheet. John doesn’t know why this makes him feel more uncomfortable rather than less. Perhaps it’s the idea of the sheet slipping slowly off and Sherlock at once revealed and concealed in nothing but white cotton - NO. John mentally clamps down on that thought. He’s here to do a job. Mind on the match. He clenches his jaw and forces himself to relax.

“Okay then. I think about three or four centimeters should do it,” muses John. “We can always do more if you like. But let’s start there.”

“Fine,” Sherlock says. There is a feeling something like fear in his stomach. But it also feels something like the anticipation of a chase before it begins.

“Okay then. Here we go,” says John, and takes a deep breath.

The first thing he does is comb out Sherlock’s hair, carefully drawing the part above his left eye, and then picks up the scissors. Sherlock watches him in the mirror, perfectly still, nothing moving except his eyes. John studies the back of his flatmate’s head for a moment, then decides to begin at the nape of the neck, where the hairline is easiest to follow. He draws a section of hair between the first two fingers of his right hand, and snips. Black curls drop onto the sheet like the commas from an unfinished conversation. There’s no turning back now.

Lift, pull, snip. Lift, pull, snip. Comb. Lift, pull, snip.

John’s focus on his task is complete, and he runs his fingers through Sherlock’s hair again and again, ensuring that he is evenly cropping the curls. He puts the scissors down on the sink rim for a moment and pulls a section from either side of Sherlock’s head in either hand, checking for a discrepancy in evenness, and smirks at finding them the same. He continues to select parallel locks and tug them through his pursed fingers, occasionally lopping off a stray hair which had escaped the initial culling. The drying hairs are arranging themselves into clusters which curl around his fingers like cats’ tails.

“Lock’s locks,” John mutters to himself, and immediately cringes. Oh Christ, _that was out loud_. He freezes and braces for the inevitable onslaught of vitriol and an exhortation not to use such stupid things as nicknames when referring to the great and terrible Sherlock Holmes.

It doesn’t come.

“Hmmmmmmm?” Sherlock rumbles, and John realizes that his friend has been breathing very slowly and deliberately for some time. He had chalked it up to Sherlock’s trying to stay still so that this could be over with as quickly as possible, but this didn’t feel like an antsy genius under duress. Then Sherlock rolls his head slightly, as if annoyed that John’s fingers have stopped their ministrations, and John realizes that his flatmate is nearly hypnotized and relaxed to the point of torpor. Experimentally, he runs his fingers through the now-slightly-more-ruly shock of curls, beginning at Sherlock’s temples and dragging back slowly to the nape of his neck.

“Aaaaaaahhhhhhhhhh,” Sherlock breathes. So John does it again. And again. Sherlock swallows, hard. And again.

John blinks slowly. He can see Sherlock reflected in the mirror above the sink, and his eyes are now closed, his face nearly expressionless, except for fractionally raised eyebrows. He has the look of someone trying very hard to seem indifferent.

John holds his breath. He pushes his fingers up from the nape into the place where the hair is thickest at the back of the head, and makes a loose fist, tugging slightly. Sherlock exhales in a shaky rush. John opens his fingers and sweeps the hair around in a circle, disturbing the strands and letting them settle again into their natural positions. Sherlock’s hands open and clench into the sheet in his lap. He moans very slightly, and then tries to cover it with a cough.

Suddenly, as though a tipping point has been reached, something in John wants more, immediately. He wants to hear that moan again, and he doesn’t want it stifled this time. He thrusts his left hand back into the hair over the occipital lobe and _pulls_. Sherlock’s head lolls back bonelessly, and the movement causes his mouth to fall open. He opens his eyes, which instantly lock with John’s. They flicker, but not with fear.

For John, this is the last straw. He bends and presses his mouth to the languid, open lips, keeping the pull of his hand in Sherlock’s hair at a constant tension. He has him right where he wants him, and damned if Sherlock is getting away. John runs the fingers of his right hand over Sherlock’s exposed throat, all long and pale and vulnerable, and feels the Adam’s apple bob up and down beneath them. Sherlock is kissing back, darting his tongue against the army doctor’s lips, and trying to work his hands free from the sheet’s surprisingly effective straightjacket. He moans slightly again, and the baritone vibrations in Sherlock’s larynx shoot like electricity through John’s fingers and straight to his groin.

Sherlock succeeds in freeing his hands by extending his arms up and outward. The effect is rather like that of a fortune cookie unwrapping itself, and John groans. Sherlock snakes his arms around John’s compact frame and swivels so that he is facing John’s stomach. Sherlock’s eyes flicker over the entirety of John from head to foot, and then nimbly undoes John’s jeans and has his cock out and halfway down Sherlock’s throat in an instant.

“Jesus _fuck ___!” John blasphemes, and fists his hands into both sides of Sherlock’s hair. Sherlock laughs, deep and resonant, and the feeling of his laughter against John’s cock is the most appealing thing John has ever felt in his life. John can’t help himself; he begins to guide Sherlock’s head by the hair up and down his cock, fucking the detective’s mouth. Sherlock grabs John’s hips to steady himself but allows John to have the control. He concentrates on keeping his teeth out of the way and rubs his tongue against the underside of the glans with every second thrust and enjoys the pleasant ache of John’s fingers against his scalp. He raises one hand to cup John’s tight and hot testicles, and gives them a gentle squeeze. In no time at all, John is coming down Sherlock’s throat and Sherlock is delighting in the taste and smell of John’s undoing and in his own abilities. He swallows and grins and pulls the limp and unresisting John into his lap for more kisses.

“What the hell just happened?” John pants.

“I seem to have a hair-pulling kink and you seem to have cleverly discovered it,” Sherlock purrs, nuzzling into John’s shirt. He looks down at himself. “Ugh, and there are hair trimmings everywhere.” He begins to pluck individual hairs off his chest and begins to pile them neatly on John’s knee.

“I thought you wanted to keep them,” John says dazedly. His body and brain fight between allowing him to revel in the endorphin rush and closeness of his best … friend? lover? and forcing him to fret about those words and their meanings and implications. John mentally shrugs and decides that if this kind of thing is now going to be happening, he is absolutely going to go along with it.

“Not _mine_ ,” Sherlock says, as though it’s the most obvious thing in the world. “I want to look at other people’s. You can tell such a lot from cut hair - state of health, ancestry, time between haircuts, whether scissors or a razor or clippers were used.... It’s an exercise in practical deduction. Keeps me from being bored.” He shifts John’s weight on his lap and sighs at the feeling of John’s arse pressing down on his erection.

A light flickers in John’s eyes. “You’re covered in hair. In fact, you’re covered in lots of hair.” It was true. When Sherlock had freed himself from his covering sheet, the discarded hair trimmings had gotten simply everywhere.

“Yes.” This was obvious. Why was John bringing it up?

“Itchy, isn’t it?”

Sherlock catches on. “ _Very ___itchy.”

“Probably wanting to do something about that, I imagine.”

“Yes. I suppose I’ll have to have another shower. Definitely in the near future.”

“Care to join me?” John’s grin is as wide as Sherlock’s ever seen it.

“Oh, _God_ , yes.”

John is on his feet and out of his clothes in the amount of time it takes Sherlock to stand up. Feeling oddly self-conscious, Sherlock is slightly hesitant to remove his underwear in front of John. It feels like the last possible moment where they could have any chance of going back to the way things were. Of course, this line of thinking is irrational, but Sherlock still takes a moment to brush at the pieces of hair sticking to his arms and chest instead of divesting himself of his briefs. John, always quicker than Sherlock will ever be to pick up on social cues, turns to fiddle with the taps to give his friend a moment’s privacy. He adjusts the water temperature - will Sherlock like the water hotter or colder than he does? he supposes he will soon find out - turns the lever to send the water from the faucet to the showerhead, and steps in, pulling the curtain almost closed behind him. John rolls his shoulders in the spray, and waits.

Nearly two full minutes later, and just as John had been about to peek around the curtain to see if Sherlock had fled, a long pale leg inserts itself into the tub, followed by the rest of the nude detective. “Processing,” he says simply, shrugging, and folds John to him. His erection had faded slightly in the interval but springs back harder than ever at the feeling of a naked and wet John Watson pressed up against it. Sherlock exults at the feeling of _all ___of John under his roving hands and John rakes his fingernails along the taller man’s back and elicits another of those deep moans he is beginning to very much look forward to.

John squirts shampoo into his palm and rubs it onto Sherlock’s cranium, smiling as he massages the hair and scalp covering that glorious brain. Sherlock bows his head and lets John have his way with it, his own hands constantly moving, touching, exploring the doctor’s body - here examining the texture of his armpit hair, there pinching a nipple gently and listening to John’s intake of breath, and over here feeling the ripple and twist of John’s scars. John wraps his arms around Sherlock in a tight wet hug and spins them so that Sherlock is under the water’s fall. “Rinse,” he instructs, and Sherlock obeys. As soon as his head is under the spray, John seizes Sherlock’s cock and begins to stroke. The concurrent sensations of John’s hand, the slightly-too-hot water on his face and in his hair, the soap suds and John’s other hand sliding down his back to his arse, and of John’s mouth suddenly clamped around his nipple pushes him over the edge.

Some erroneously believe that a duck’s quack doesn’t echo, but against the tile walls of the shower Sherlock’s shouts as he comes certainly do.

Later, towelled off, dressed in their blue bathrobes, and cuddling together on the sofa, John looks down at Sherlock’s head nestled in his lap as he continues to stroke that beautiful hair. _And it’s a pretty good haircut, too,_ he thinks, and begins to giggle.

“What’s so funny?” Sherlock asks, drinking in every detail of John’s face and marvelling at the freedom to touch and be touched, as happy as anyone in reciprocated love with a friend has ever been.

“Nothing. Well. I was just looking forward to next month,” John snorts, and Sherlock begins to laugh too, and soon they are holding each other and laughing so hard and so long that John begins to wonder if he’s lost his mind, and then decides he doesn’t really want it back anyway if it means ever having to give up Sherlock and _this_.


End file.
